


bubby and tommy hate each other basically :(

by dino_friends_personal_space



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: unhappy vibes and problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:13:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25745665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dino_friends_personal_space/pseuds/dino_friends_personal_space
Summary: Prompt: Tommy and Bubby both hate each other because Tommy is smarter than Bubby despite Bubby being the perfect human. They’re also both friends with Benrey and their hate hurts Benrey.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment, I like comments :)

Bubby wasn’t human.

Humans had flaws. Imperfections. 

He, however, was perfect. A perfect scientific anomaly made by a group of scientists grabbing the best, most “favorable” genes. 

Bubby was perfect. The perfect human. Bubby was supposed to be the best, most perfect human. The best and the smartest. 

Except, he wasn’t. Tommy was the smartest. And they both knew that.

Tommy wasn’t perfect. Tommy was far from perfect; he had little quirks Bubby’s creators would have deemed as “unfavorable”. But still, he was smarter than Bubby. A unique way of looking at the world working around him which in turn made him smarter than Bubby. Tommy could connect two contrasting views like he was connecting a puzzle in which only he could see. Tommy’s imperfections made him perfect--hell, he even made the perfect immortal dog. 

Bubby kicked an empty soda can in the hallway, setting it on fire with his brain. He was definitely better than everyone else if he could do that too! 

When Bubby first met Tommy, he tried to compete. He belittled Tommy, teasing his “childish” interests. In return, Tommy acted in a professional passive-aggressive manner in the lab--rarely acknowledging Bubby, ignoring Bubby at times and one time even breaking a test tube in his hand. 

Though that stopped when Benrey came along. 

Benrey was first a major annoyance to Bubby. Always staring at them from a distance too close to get in the way and too far to be included in the experiment. 

However, Benrey eventually grew on Bubby, sharing with him good gossip about the other employees and scientists. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t use that knowledge to get back at the less respectful ones. 

Benrey treated Bubby as a human--not a tool, not a glorified scientific wonder-- but a human. The little gifts of gossip any regular employee would receive in their outside lives showed Bubby little fragments of the life outside of the facility.

Plus, Benrey's inferiority-- his incoherent, disconnected mumbling about video games and utter lack of understanding in the ways of science--made Bubby feel a bit better about himself. 

However, there was a problem: Benrey was also Tommy’s friend. 

Whenever Bubby would shoot a quick, snide jab at Tommy for making a minor miscalculation or a comparison between a scientific subject matter and a kid’s tv show, there was a change in the air. As if all the guns were drawn, locked and loaded at each other. Tommy would give Bubby the cold shoulder and constantly forget things, hindering the experiment thus leading to more belittlement.

The turmoil was terrible, suspended pungent in the air like the permanent un-scrubbable red markers streaks on the whiteboard. And Bubby could see that it weighed on Benrey. Therefore, Bubby acknowledged that Tommy was smarter than him.

But, he didn’t accept it. 

Bubby wasn’t someone to go down that easily. He was more of the person that would be willing to die on the hill he stood on. 

Bubby tried to memorize the entirety of the Black Mesa Sweet Voice language and become fluent in it. It made sense that a language as complicated and fluid as Sweet Voice would be something he, the perfect human, would easily master. Master easier than Tommy. However, much to his dismay, within 3 months into his study, he discovered that Tommy was already fluent in it. Tommy’s musical inclination and rhyme mnemonics (which Bubby unfortunately found himself using sometimes) helped him with it and proved itself more effective.

He wasn’t smart enough to become fluent in the Black Mesa Sweet Voice. But, that was impossible, because Bubby was the most perfect human being. 

A loud crash and spew of Black Mesa Sweet Voice lighting up the air snapped Bubby out of his thoughts. He surveyed his surroundings: Gordon yelling at Benrey for something, Dr. Coomer punching something and Tommy pointing a gun at him, looking off into the distance over his shoulder, distracted. 

“Tommy” Bubby said, annoyed.

“Yeah?” Tommy replied, purposely not using his name. It was these simple, passive-aggressive ways he showed his general disdain and displeasure towards other people. The overuse of Dr. Coomer’s name and proper title further highlighted the point Tommy was trying to bring apart. However, much like Bubby, the same treatment happened to Gordon. Tommy only called him Mr. Freeman instead of Dr. Freeman as the PhD holding man would expect. Gordon probably pissed Tommy off by calling him a child multiple times despite Tommy having a decade on him. 

“Are you fucking stupid? Don’t point the goddamn gun at me, dipshit” Bubby said, huffing and crossing his arms. Tommy didn’t lower his gun but he did turn his attention to something else, acting in a manner as a cat that heard you say its name but acted as if they hadn’t and were acting on their own will. 

It seemed that Gordon was done yelling at Benrey and the group continued on, Bubby taking his place next to Benrey. They had actually begun to formulate a plan of sorts about Gordon in between all the gossip about him. 

However, this exchange was a bit different. 

“You have a problem. With us” Bubby whispered, matter-of-factly to Benrey. 

“Huh?”

“About Tommy and me. We hate each other” 

“That’s, uh, not my problem. The only problem I have is, is the other ones other people have. So, they’re not my problems” 

“Hm, if you say so” Bubby said. He noted Gordon’s stares and stepped away to avoid becoming even more suspicious (which did the opposite in fact). Can’t have Gordon knowing about the plan. 

Though, Bubby did feel a little guilty for Benrey. Actually, scratch that, he did feel a lot of guilt for what Benrey felt. He couldn’t imagine how Benrey felt seeing that his two best and most likely only friends absolutely hated each other guts. Actually, Bubby could imagine that. It made him feel horrible, but he pushed it down. For now. He’d deal with his lackluster intelligence and his second-place position on the “smartest person here” podium later. He’d deal with Tommy’s indignation towards him later.

For now, he’d just have to focus on the plan.


	2. what benrey thinks about this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what would you think if your two best friends hated each other?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe i like the rock ocean metaphor I put in there.

Benrey dreaded the days Bubby and Tommy worked on an experiment together. Sure, he should be happy that he’d be able to see both of his friends at the same time, but, that wasn’t the case. Instead, he felt the dread festering deep inside of him every time he read their names in the same box. 

When they fought, it was terrible. How does one even begin to live with the responsibility that by a single keystroke, a single sentence, fumbling from your mouth, can make or break a person? 

That’s why Benrey opted to remain stagnant in time, waiting for the lab time block to end so he could finally leave the room where each breath was a struggle for the emotions and hatred in the air was so thick. 

He didn’t know what to do, to say. He could easily fuck up friendships with both of them by saying a word. By taking a side. That’s why Benrey was a rock in the ocean of bad feelings. A rock simply remaining and existing, slowly being eroded away by the chaotic and harsh waves the ocean had. 

Benrey knew why Bubby hated Tommy, for sure. And there was nothing he could do to fix it. It wasn’t a personality problem, but rather an intelligence problem. Tommy was “smarter” than Bubby. Honestly, Benrey didn’t really see why it mattered so much--they were both very smart dudes in slightly different ways. Bubby in a mathematical way and Tommy in an engineering-problem solving way. 

However, Benrey wasn’t sure why Tommy hated Bubby. When Benrey asked, Tommy denied his anger at Bubby, claiming that it was “Okay. Everything was fine. Finer than a dandelion in a grassy field”. Benrey knew better than that seeing Tommy's statement that “i’ll get back at him” seemed to discount the statement that everything was fine. Honestly, Tommy must just be reacting to Bubby’s mean behavior. 

It’s not like he could fix that either. Benrey knew that they had to resolve that problem between themselves but wanted it to be better as soon as possible. The only problems Benrey had at this point was the unsolvable problems of the people he cared about. 

He wanted to help but he couldn’t. 

So, Benrey remained there, the ocean of discontempt and hate between his two friends slowly eroding the rock away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment! I like comments :)

**Author's Note:**

> Authors Note: I really like the paragraph about Tommy and Bubby first fighting because it shows the difference between their "mannerisms". Like, Tommy likes "childish" things but he acts in a professional manner toward Bubby while Bubby who has "normal" interests acts in an utterly childish way in response to his intelligence being "threatened".


End file.
